by I’d love being a travel writer if it weren’t for the travel.
Look, I love to travel, but not for the reasons most people love to travel.
Anna and I recently celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary, along with our pending 40th birthdays, in Greece.
What I love most about traveling to foreign countries is being surrounded by people who don’t speak English. Well, let’s be real, most of them do speak English, it’s just not their preferred method of communicating.
I’m grateful for that.
My inability to understand what people are saying allows me to tune them out. I can’t do that in America. I’ve been a journalist for too long. In fact, if you don’t want me to hear what you have to say, then it’s probably better if you speak in a loud, clear voice directly at my face.
I’ll never notice it.
But if you whisper in the corner of the room, I’ll probably pick up everything you said.
I don’t know why it works that way. It just does. And it can be really frustrating at times, especially if I’m trying to listen to someone I’m having a conversation with.
For me, the solitude created by a language barrier is a liberating and stress-reducing state of being that I can’t replicate here in the U.S.
The second thing I love about visiting foreign countries is the physical distance it allows me to put between me and the people, places and things that cause me stress on a day-to-day basis.
A seven-hour time difference and 5,000 miles makes it really hard for things like that to follow you, despite our advancements in communication technology.
Sure, my cell phone worked in Greece, but it was only on when it was 2 a.m. back in the States.
One of the good things about getting older is there are not too many of your acquaintances who are up at 2 a.m.
And the third thing I love about traveling is sitting in the airport waiting on a flight.
That’s where you see people yelling at airline workers trying to make sure the plane is boarded on time, or you see people sprinting through the terminal – and you know they haven’t run anywhere in the past 20 years.
It’s times like that when I take stock of my current situation in life and I’m grateful that it’s better than whatever those folks had going on.
And don’t forget about the family who just got off a nine-hour flight with two kids under age 10.
I didn’t catch where that flight came from, but the children were definitely over their traveling experience, and based on the back-and-forth between the parents, their marriage might have been over, too.
It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea if couples took a weeklong trip that required an inordinate amount of time using the commercial airline system and experiencing going through customs before getting married. It’s a quick way to find out if you really want to spend the rest of your life with someone.
As for my traveling companion, I can’t wait to do it again.
